


145. overthrow

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [228]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:42:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9692126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “I’m sorry,” Helena says. “I didn’t know where else to go. I can’t go back to the DYAD now – they’ll put me down for this.” Horror: her lower lip is wobbling. “Please – don’t send me back.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Proclone Helena!](http://sharkodactyl.tumblr.com/tagged/we%20pick%20ourselves%20undone/chrono)

Someone is knocking on the door to Felix’s loft. Actual _knocking_ , too, not the usual pounding of fist on metal that most of Felix’s guests use. Sarah looks at Felix. Felix looks at Sarah. The knocking continues, just mechanical enough to be unsettling.

“Do _not_ answer that,” Felix says.

Sarah stands up from the couch.

“ _Sarah!_ I am serious as a bloody heart attack, _do_ not open that door—”

Sarah opens the door. She regrets it immediately.

Standing on the other side: Helena. Sarah’s sister, apparently, although she still has a hard time believing in that – has a hard time believing in _anything_ the DYAD tells her, even (or maybe especially) if it’s through the mouthpiece of her own face. Helena Duncan. Long straight blonde hair. Red lipstick. Blood drying in all of the fabric of her expensive clothing.

Wait.

Sarah blinks, focuses. Helena is shaking. Helena is holding a letter opener. Helena is _soaked_ with blood.

“Christ,” Sarah says, “get in here, what the hell happened, did anyone _see_ you?” She’s grabbing Helena’s elbow and pulling her in before she realizes, too late, that Helena could actually be here to kill her.

(She doesn’t _think_ Helena is here to kill her. If there’s one thing about Helena she trusts, it’s the desperate hunger in her eyes every single time she looks at Sarah. The way she keeps saying _please_ , like: please, we can give you an apartment, we can take care of you. Please. Please let me take care of you.)

Felix stumbles backwards, the chair he’s sitting on falling with a crash to the ground, and Helena blinks and comes back to herself. “You must be Felix,” she says, voice bending just one note shy of the right pitch. She sounds like a tape recorder being played back wrong; when she smiles, it’s ghastly. “Hello.”

“Helena,” Sarah says again, over the sound of Felix saying _oh god oh god oh god_. Helena’s gaze snaps to her immediately; when she says “ _Sarah_ ” it sounds like giving up.

“They lied to me,” Helena says. Her eyes are wide and guileless. She looks like a child playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. She looks like a child. She’s holding a knife. Sarah doesn’t know what to do, she just doesn’t _know_ —

“No shit,” she says bluntly.

“I didn’t mean to kill them,” Helena says. She looks down at the letter opener and furrows her brow. “Or maybe I did. I don’t remember.”

“Get out,” Felix says shakily. Helena spares him one second of interest and then looks at Sarah.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know where else to go. I can’t go back to the DYAD now – they’ll put me down for this.” Horror: her lower lip is wobbling. “Please – don’t send me back.”

“We are sending you back,” Felix says.

“God, Fe, will you just be _quiet?_ ” Sarah snaps, without meaning to. The air for a second is deadly silent. Felix and Helena are both staring at her with matching looks of shock. Sarah shoves the heels of her hands into her eye socket, shoves them up and then down. It does nothing to help. “Right,” she says, and then: “right. You,” she gestures at Helena, “sit on the couch and don’t move.”

Helena just stands there and looks at her. “I’m not kidding,” Sarah says. “We’ve gotta figure out what to do with you, alright? Sit _down_.”

“I’m sorry,” Helena whispers. “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I.” She still doesn’t sit down.

“I don’t know,” Sarah says, uneasy. “They probably deserved it. _Not_ ,” she adds, “that I think you did the right thing. Just – please, Helena, just sit down.”

“Alright,” Helena says, still in that too-quiet whisper, and goes and sits down. When she reaches the seat cushions she folds over, abruptly, house of cards collapsing until she’s lying on her side curled up like a kid. Her fist is crusted shut with dried blood around the letter opener. She watches empty space.

She looks just like Sarah. She could have _been_ Sarah. Both of these things are true in a way they aren’t true for the others. These things might be the only reason Helena is lying on that couch, right now, and not thrown outside into the cold.

Felix is still standing by the kitchen. Sarah crosses over to him, guilty, arms folded around her middle.

“This is a terrible idea,” Felix hisses.

“I know, Fe.”

“What the hell are we going to do with her?”

Sarah doesn’t know. Sarah wishes, more than anything, that she knew.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [473\. chipped nail polish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9711260) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09)




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